Taco wrote:There's nothing wrong about expressing your opinions as long as your not rude about it, I think that's the main concern.

Rude is a matter of opinion. Also you can't enforce being nice anymore than you can enforce good taste. A person can only be civilized through culture, learning and exposure.

But more importantly not everything is a compartmentalized intellectual discussion. If I believe strongly in something and there is an irreconcilable difference, then my goal isn't to be civilized with them. My goal is to intimidate them and convince others to hate them also. So there's a very valid reason to be "rude".

If I ban, then people complain. If I unban, people will complain...LOL! Nothing but complaints, left and right; can't seem to please anyone on this forum, smh. ..

Ghost, sorry to see you go. I hope you reconsider. I know you're upset at me and other posters, but I felt like I had to do the right thing. In the end, if I feel like I made a mistake...I will reconsider my ban. But people were upset with me when I banned Blue Murder, Outside the Box and Odbo from the forum, and as a result, the forum grew very rapidly in numbers after that.

I've gotten some pm messages thanking me for what I did; I've also gotten hate messages as well.

No matter what...this forum is divided, and it will be in the foreseeable future.

Good luck to you wherever you go, Ghost. Maybe I can even see you someday in Asia in-person. Ciao...

Taco wrote:There's nothing wrong about expressing your opinions as long as your not rude about it, I think that's the main concern.

Exactly. By the way, the rules say no insults. People like ThePrimeBait HAVE insulted myself and others as well as the women we date. They broke the rules plain and simple.

I am not fond of banning, but if you have rules and those rules are disregarded, then banning is a reasonable outcome.

The difficulty is in reconciling Winston's free speech no matter what policy with comments that are insulting to individual members. If someone attacks an individual member or a group of members, then a warning and ultimately banning is legitimate.

You can maintain a free speech forum and still have rules of behavior.

zboy1 wrote:But people were upset with me when I banned Blue Murder, Outside the Box and Odbo from the forum, and as a result, the forum grew very rapidly in numbers after that.

In numbers? What about quality and interesting content? Seems like it's now dominated by bitching about western women with a few interesting posts and threads by mainly Winston these days. I certainly don't see how it's improved. It's less informative, interesting, entertaining, etc. than it once was when Winston handled the banning and moderating himself, IMO.

Maybe if you ban enough people, it will slowly die with a whimper or become as boring and PC as all the other options out there.

I actually liked Ghost too for his posts. I guess this what happens to some forums. It reminds me of Kai who left and a few others who thought of the changes to the forum were not good since this forum is supposed to give advice to men (and women) who are interested in leaving a restricted western society to live and/or possibly find a nice women as well.

There are still some good posts but from what I have seen, Winston did limited banning which made the board interesting but I would have liked to see more posts about doing business and/or tips to get residency in different countries.

Ghost wrote:With the recent turn of the forum to democracy, where members can banned because a few others vote for it, is something I find abhorrent. And all of you who participated in getting guys you don't like banned ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Trying to suppress speech because you disagree with it is clear and simple fascism. If you can't argue with or ignore something you disagree with, then perhaps you are the ones who should leave. This site has an ignore function and it works fine - if you use it. Instead, what we have is a clear abuse of power and the mob mentality at work.

Without free speech, I expect that Happier Abroad won't last too much longer. Oh sure, it will be around, but it will be shit. What I care about is the spirit of the place, and it is dead. In truth, it has been dead for a while. These recent bannings are symptoms of it. It's just the kind of thing feminists would do. And it would not surprise me if this was the work of feminist trolls. But even if it isn't, it is still the work of pussies. You guys who can't ignore or argue against what you disagree with are scum, plain and simple. And I hope what you've done gets paid back a hundred-fold.

When I first joined Happier Abroad, it was a symbol of hope. Now it has thrown away its spirit and spiraled into something so low and wicked as democracy. Here's a simple way to explain the problem: HA has too many assholes. This alone represents the truth of the world, but now we have asshole behavior being enforced by democracy. And even though I've gone abroad and found more happiness than ever before, I find myself sharing less and less of it because I see too many assholes around. Why help those who might want me banned if they disagree with me? Or those who want to increasingly ruin foreign lands for cheap pleasure? Or those who incessantly whine and complain without lifting a finger to help themselves?

And yet I don't want these types to be banned, either. There are more intelligent solutions, like creating a private forum for veteran members with good intentions, or new members having to earn privileges through good posts and good behavior. Free speech has been the heart of this community and problems would either correct themselves or better solutions would arise to any problems the forum may have. Banning people by vote is absurd and shows just how far things have fallen.

Anyone wanting free speech can post on the forum in my signature, the CoAlpha Brotherhood. There may be other sites out there as well that actually practice free speech, but I do not know. I will keep looking.

Adios and f**k you assholes,

Ghost

I tend to agree. It has been bad for awhile, but this tops it off. BTW, keep in touch.